


Luminance

by placentalmammal



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Roleswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-23 18:45:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11408352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/placentalmammal/pseuds/placentalmammal
Summary: What if Adelaide had been the one to murder Tristero? Adelaide-Angelo roleswap, contains non-explicit sex and graphic violence.





	Luminance

The captain is called Calhoun, and Hella has never seen her without a bottle in her fist. She’s a hurricane of a woman, all calloused palms and savage laughter, but there is something genteel in her manner and bearing. She seems to slip back into it under duress: during storms and squalls, her words are precise and her posture is immaculate. Watching her, it is plain that she was something else before she was a sailor—an heiress or a duchess or a rich man’s wife. But whoever she used to be, she is only herself now, and Hella takes an immediate liking to her.

First and foremost, Calhoun is beautiful. Full lips and high cheekbones; gold and precious stones in her ears and through her nose; silver cuffs on her dreadlocks, each adorned with a tiny, perfect bell. A horizontal thread of scar tissue cuts a line from cheek to brow, lending a piratical asymmetry to her lovely features. And underneath her overcoat and bandoliers, her body is trim and shapely, sailors’ muscles softened by a hard-earned layer of fat.

She laughs prettily when she pours herself into Hella’s lap and wraps her legs around her waist. “Your hands,” pants Calhoun, directing Hella’s attention to her bare breasts. “I want to know what you can do with your hands, girl.”

It’s good for both of them, Hella thinks. She comes once and Calhoun comes twice, rutting against Hella’s thigh, gasping into her mouth. Hella kisses her hard enough to leave marks on her dark flesh, and the next day, Calhoun wears a shirt low enough to showcase her lovebites.

It’s a little awkward over breakfast, with Lem and Fero shooting her questioning looks, but she pays them no mind. She resolves, instead, to spend as much time in Calhoun’s presence as possible, servicing her with hands, lips, and tongue. She’s absolutely domineering, but there’s something sweet in the surrender, and Hella is surprised to discover that she enjoys ceding power.

It’s restored to her all at once during the negotiations with Brandish. “Your life for hers,” he snarls. He uses one hand to hold his slit throat closed, the other to press the tip of his sword up against Calhoun’s bruised throat. “Do we have a deal, Ordenna?”

They do. Hella nods, Brandish laughs, and Calhoun screams as they drop a filthy sack down over her head. She is shackled and bound and loaded onto _The Kingdom Come_ and Hella thinks that’ll be the last she’ll ever see of her.

She is not counting on Lem and Fero’s objections. By her own arithmetic, she has nothing to apologize for: she saved her own life and their lives and the lives of everyone aboard. “I did what I had to,” she says, jaw set in a furious line. “I did what _none_ of you were willing to.”

Lem looks at her, horror-struck, and Fero says _yeah maybe there was a reason for that!_ and they bully her into a rescue mission. They take the ship and set off in pursuit of Brandish, confident that _this_ time, nobody has to die.

They come ashore on a beach with black sands, an impossible city looming over them. And Hella’s sword begins to _sing,_ a ghostly chorus consisting of a single word: _Tristero, Tristero, Tristero!_ If the damned thing weren’t so valuable, she’d cast it into the sea and let all the fishes contend with the haunted blade and the spirits contained therein.

They enter the city with no real objective and find it inhabited, half its residents dead or undead. Hella keeps her hand on her hilt, but nobody looks twice at them. They’re tourists, her, Lem, and Fero, and no one takes notice of them until they reach the sacred inn at the city center. The second confrontation with Brandish goes more poorly than the first. Hella dies, and reawakens, full of purpose: find Calhoun and return her to her father.

Because Hella was _right_ , and Calhoun isn’t Calhoun at all, but _Adelaide._ She has a whole host of titles to go with her new name: the missing girl, the heir apparent, our sister, the princess of pearls. Betrayer, coward, wretched, abdicator of hope. Because Adelaide’s father was the god of death, and it was _her_ who put a sword through his heart and fled Nacre so many hundreds of years earlier.

(Adelaide—Calhoun—looks very much like her father. Same round features, same high cheekbones, same dark skin and close, curling hair. It is disquieting to stand before him and see so much of her.)

“She is in the sable spire,” says the god of death. “Find her and return her to me.”

Hella accepts his devil’s bargain. She sees no other way forward. She wakes, hours later, in a cell in the sable spire, Lem and Fero kneeling over her, their faces pinched with concern. Lem embraces her, Fero slaps her on the back. “You scared us,” he says, and his voice shakes. “Don’t do that again.”

That evening, they are summoned to the palace to meet the reigning king of Nacre, Lord Angelo Tristan IX. He is Adelaide’s—Calhoun’s—brother, very handsome, though not so vivacious as his sister. He is dressed all in white, and he looks pinched and pale, dark hair in disarray. His crown—a strange thing, iron and pearls—sits uneasy on his head. The king lacks his sister’s inborn elegance, although his fine dress and opulent surroundings somewhat make up for that deficit. He is polite, distant, and he drinks too much wine with dinner.

He is palpably alone, lost and solemn and silent at the head of the table. Hella watches him and thinks that maybe, she might’ve liked him if they had met under different circumstances.

They are returned to the sable spire under heavy guard, but it is made plain that there will not be there indefinitely. “Just until other arrangements can be made,” Angelo says, not looking at them.

“You could let us go,” Hella says, more sharply than she intended, and Lem kicks her under the table.

Angelo laughs, a bitter and hollow thing. “Nobody leaves Nacre,” he says, and he sighs. “In the end, not even our sister.”

Hella averts her eyes and says nothing.

She breaks into the rooms where Calhoun— _Adelaide_ , not Calhoun, it will be easier if she remembers that the woman in white is Adelaide and not Calhoun—is being kept, and she finds her in bedclothes, seated by a barred window and looking out over the sea. She is immediately relieved and eventually furious when Hella explains, in her own stumbling way, why she is there.

“Fuck you,” says Calhoun—Adelaide—and she takes up a small knife from the fruit plate by the bed, brandishing it like a sword. “I won’t go easy, you _bitch_ , you already betrayed me once—”

She is wrath and vengeance, and it is not enough to save her. She catches Hella across the face with her knife, opening a horizontal thread of blood and pain that cuts a line from cheek to brow. Hella wraps one massive hand around Adelaide’s wrist and squeezes until she feels the thin, bird-like bones twist and pop. Adelaide cries out in pain and the weapon slips from her fingers and falls noisily to the floor.

Sobbing, Hella puts her hands on Adelaide’s throat, and they topple backwards, knocking into a chess table laid with ivory and ebony. The pieces clatter noisily across the marble tiles and Adelaide claws at Hella’s face, trying to jab her slender fingers into her eyes and nose. It is not enough.

She dies three times. She dies without dignity, nightgown rucked up her thighs, her best friend’s hands wrapped tight around her throat. It is an awful death, an ugly death, and Hella regrets it as soon as it’s done. She sits on the floor, crouched animalistically over the body, and washes Calhoun’s face with her tears. She does not resist when the guard comes, does not speak a word to defend herself when Lem and Fero confront her.

“I did what I had to,” she says to herself once they are gone. “I _had_ to.”

Sleep does not come easily, and when it does, she finds herself in Tristero’s throne room once again, but this time, it’s Calhoun sitting on the alabaster throne. She looks exactly how Hella remembers, except the iron-and-pearls crown of Nacre is on her brow.

She wears it much better than her brother, Hella thinks.

“Was it worth it?” she says, ruthlessly. “Did you get what you wanted?”

“I’m still here, aren’t I?” asks Hella.

Adelaide laughs, cruel and unforgiving. “Nobody leaves Nacre,” she says. “Didn’t they tell you, Hella? You’re _never_ going to be rid of me, now.” She laughs again, louder this time, and Hella wakes with the thunder of it echoing in her ears.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Sterling silver, natural pearl...keep yourself away from danger, hide your luminance from strangers_ [x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXy1HwYl2ao)


End file.
